black telephones.
The other side of the booth the same
and
separating them
some pretty tough-looking Plexiglas.
There’s no air con,
though it must be close to ninety degrees.
I think about asking for water,
but I won’t take anything from these people.
Ever.
NOT A HOSPITAL
Everyone mouths off about
how much they hate the smell of hospitals,
but have any of them been to a prison?
IT’S ED
I don’t look at the Plexiglas.
I study the floor,
my dusty sneakers,
then my hands, engine grease under the nails
to prove I haven’t wasted my morning.
Something slams behind me.
I don’t turn.
I’m scared to look anywhere
except
down.
So I sit stiff in the chair.
I don’t look at the Plexiglas.
I study the floor,
and finally a shadow
falls.
I look up.
It’s Ed.
COCO
The Ed I knew
didn’t have the balls to kill a cat,
let alone a cop.
When our cat Coco got real sick
but the vet was out of town for the weekend,
Mom said, ‘For Christ’s sake, take that thing
down to the Hudson and do it a favour.’
Coco was cradled in his arms,
mewling like a newborn.
She couldn’t move her own limbs,
hadn’t eaten anything for days.
Her black fur was falling out.
She was as light as a kitten.
Still, Ed held on.
‘You want me to take Coco to the river and drown her?’
We were in the backyard.
Mom was smoking a cigarette.
Ed and I were playing ‘I Spy’.
He wasn’t letting me win;
he never did, just cos I was younger,
and I liked that.
‘It would be the kindest thing to do,’ Mom said.
‘Since when have you cared about the kindest thing?’
he murmured,
not wanting to upset the cat.
Mom rose, pushed her chair back.
‘That thing’s a goner.
Only difference doing it on Monday will be that
Dr Death takes a hundred bucks off us
for the privilege of letting her suffer.
I’ve got a bag in the closet –
we could do it for free.’
Ed glanced at me, kept his voice low.
‘I’m not putting Coco into a fucking bag.’
Mom slung
her burning cigarette
into the dry grass.
‘I’ll get someone else to do it. Give her here.’
Ed recoiled,
eyes blazing,
the muscles in his neck tightening.
‘I’m not paying for the vet,’ Mom insisted.
Coco mewled again,
thinner this time,
begging to be saved from our mother.
‘Come on, Joe,’ Ed said.
He marched into the house,
knocking Mom out of the way
as he charged through the
back door.
In our room, Ed passed the cat to me and
spread out a fleece on his bed.
I flattened my face against her bony head and
she licked me with a gravelly tongue.
She hissed.
‘Maybe it hurts to be held,’ he suggested.
I put her down gently and Coco lay still,
closed her eyes.
‘I’ll go to the drug store and buy a baby bottle,
get her to drink some milk.’
I nodded.
‘Do you think Coco might get better?’ I asked.
‘No, Joe. Coco’s gonna die,’ he said
with certainty.
‘You think she knows that?’
‘I sure as hell hope not.’
He grabbed his cell phone from his desk.
‘Call me if Mom tries to touch her.’
I curled up on the bed next to Coco,
watched as her tiny body
moved
up and
down
with her shallow breath.
I wasn’t one for praying but
I asked Jesus to save Coco,
stop her being eaten alive
from the inside by a massive tumour.
My prayer didn’t work though,
and by morning,
when I woke up next to her,
Ed asleep in the other bed,
Coco was cold.
THE PRISONER
White jumpsuit,
hair shaved close,
a bolt and crossbow tattooed on
one side
of his neck,
sloppily done, by another inmate maybe.
Ed smiles,
lips stretched thin,
revealing every bad tooth in his head.
And I smile back,
cos I’m not sure what else to do.
I was right to be nervous:
I don’t know this person
shifting in his seat,
hunched like an old man,
a person in his own right
and not
just carefully constructed memories
and half-baked stories.
He’s your brother, I tell myself.
He’s your blood.
Be cool for fuck’s sake.
Ed flexes his fingers.
Sure, he is my brother
but he’s also a grown man
I haven’t seen for more than a decade
with a whole life
that hasn’t included me.
This Ed is a stranger.
MARINER’S MARSHES
He was loitering outside the school gates,
hood up,
coat zipped to his chin,
looking shifty.
‘Ed,’ I said,
and skipped towards him.
I followed him up the street
and we walked and walked,
finally reaching Mariner’s Marshes
about a mile away.
‘We’re not allowed to go in there,’ I said,
knowing the park had been
closed off to the public since
before I was born.
Ed grinned and took my hand,
led me into a place very few
people in Staten Island dared to go –
an industrial wasteland,
a perfect wilderness,
a place filled with burnt-out cars,
old ship parts,
and dotted with ponds, marshes, swamps.
Every kid in the neighbourhood knew
that a guy called Dempsey Hawkins
brought his girlfriend here in the Seventies
and killed her.
It’s the perfect place for it –
deserted, quiet,
old barrels and tunnels
where you could easily hide a body.
Ed led me to one of the yellow-bricked
passageways,
icicles clinging to the roof of the tunnel.
‘Why are we here?’ I asked.
Ed opened up his backpack,
took out a carton of milk
and handed it to me.
‘I don’t wanna go home yet.
I flunked out of school,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Cos I’m a loser.’
I slurped milk through the straw.
It was so cold it made my brain ache.
‘You’re not a loser, Ed.’
‘I gotta get
outta Arlington.
I gotta get out
and make something of myself.’
I’d heard it before.
It was Ed’s refrain –
I gotta go,
I’m leaving,
I can’t stay.
‘Will you be OK if I’m not around?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ I said,
but I didn’t mean it.
Ed was my brother but also
sort of like
my dad
and my best friend too.
It grew dark and we stayed right where we were –
huddled together beneath the cloudless sky
and a full moon that rose slowly
and lit up the wilderness
with yellow light.
‘It almost makes you gasp to look at it,’ Ed said,
pointing to the sky.
‘Or makes you want to hide.’
I put my head on his shoulder.
‘I could come with you,’ I said.
I always said this and Ed always agreed.
‘Sure,’ he replied,
and ruffled my hair.
‘Definitely.’
THE FIRST VISIT
‘He can’t hear you, kid,’ the marine-guard says
as I start to speak.
‘Use the phone.’
I put the handset to my ear.
Ed does the same
once the guard has yanked off his handcuffs.
His breath whistles down the line.
‘Jesus, man, you look thirty years old,’ he says.
His voice is scratchy,
like he’s spent the years smoking,
and doesn’t sound like the home videos Angela’s kept
or even the guy I spoke to on the phone
a couple years ago
when Karen was gone away for a few days.
No trace of an Arlington accent.
I run a hand through my hair.
‘The puberty troll turned up.
Said she couldn’t wait any longer and
gave me facial hair.
Bitch.’
Ed laughs, bangs the desk
between us.
His guard glowers.
My marine clears his throat.
‘So, how you getting on, Joe?’
He leans forward to listen.
But what am I supposed to say?
I’d prefer to crack jokes for an hour
than talk about stuff that matters.
Then again, what does matter?
I sit up straighter.
‘I’m doing good. Got an apartment
and if I can turn over a junker, I’ll get a job too.’
He smiles. ‘You’re here for how long?’
I pause.
‘For as long as you need me,’ I say.
He raises an eyebrow.
‘And you got an apartment?
Shit.
When I first came to Texas,
I loafed around for months.
Here half a second and got yourself set up?
You aren’t like me, Joe, that’s for sure.’
He rubs one eye with the heel of his hand,
holds the handset under his chin for a second.
‘So …’ he says eventually.
‘Yeah. So.’
I wait for him to say something
but he’s struggling as much as I am.
‘Are you … Is your …’ I begin,
wondering about his case.
But before I’ve formed a question,
I change my mind,
ask something meaningless.
‘How’s the food?’
Ed sticks one finger into his mouth and
makes a gagging noise.
‘It’s lousy, man. Farm can’t spend more than
a couple dollars on any meal,
so it’s cheese and chunder most days.’
He pauses, embarrassed.
‘Don’t suppose you could stick a few bucks
into my account for snacks?
I hate to ask.
I guess Karen decided to stop sending cash.
I did wonder when that would happen.’
‘Karen was sending cash?’
‘A few dollars a month, yeah.
Rarely answered letters though.
As I said, I hate to ask, but …’
I hold up a hand,
stop him speaking.
‘No problem,’ I say, even though I’ve spent
my last dime on rent and haven’t the fare for a
bus ride back into town.
He sighs. ‘How’s Angela?’
I shrug.
‘She’s OK. Works a lot.’
He scratches his scalp,
starts to bite what’s left of a thumbnail.
‘She got her head around this?’
‘She’s got Karen,’ I lie,
cos Ed still doesn’t know
our aunt left last week
on account of me being here and
that Angela and I are pretty much
fending for ourselves.
In a flash, he brightens.
‘So the job? You gonna be a drug dealer’s wheels?’
I laugh,
and we talk about my running,
school,
sports and
then Star Wars,
me trying to convince him that
Rey’s way cooler than Princess Leia
ever was,
cos, of course, he hasn’t seen the new ones.
It’s all
unimportant things
and never
The Thing.
And then, time’s up.
‘Three o’clock,’ the marine shouts
to no one in particular,
though I’m the only one in the room.
‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ I tell Ed.
‘Have you heard from Mom?’
he asks quickly.
I haven’t a chance to answer.
Already they’ve grabbed the phone off him,
shackled his wrists and ankles,
and are roughly leading him away.
UP AGAINST A COOKIE JAR
Angela thought the note
propped up
against an empty cookie jar
was a joke.
‘Why would Mom go to Minnesota on a bus?’
I didn’t understand either.
She was gone? Like never coming back?
Like Dad was dead and Ed was in prison?
Aunt Karen rushed out to work,
cursing Mom for making us worry.
Angela and I ditched school.
We watched TV, waited for Mom to call
or come home.
We thought by the time it got dark
she would stagger in
carting a stuffed-crust pizza.
Maybe she’d smell of beer or be
dozy from pills,
but that would be all right.
Better home
and
out of it
than on a Greyhound to the Midwest.
Only it didn’t happen.
Mom never came home
and Aunt Karen took over completely,
raging with Ed for what he’d done to us.
I was nine by then.
A week after Mom took off
we got a letter from Ed,
dropping on to the mat with a considered huff.
He wanted to know when we were heading
down to Texas
to see him.
‘I wouldn’t visit that lowlife
if he was tied to a tree in the yard,’ Karen yelled.
‘He destroyed this family.
He destroyed two families.’
She wasn’t interested in his innocence.
Guilty by judge and jury was enough,
and she made sure we knew it.
&nbs
p; ‘He killed a police officer
and finished off your mother.’
Mom didn’t vanish entirely though.
She sent postcards sometimes.
I never bothered to keep them.
EVERYONE WALKED
I never had a dad
but I had a big brother
and then I didn’t
and then I didn’t have a mother
and I spent a lot of time wondering
when I would lose
my sister
my aunt,
until everyone I loved walked out the front door
leaving me alone.
THE GAS STATION
The girl from the diner, Nell,
studies a display of DVDs
along the back wall of the gas station.
I move towards her,
open a packet of gum without paying for it.
‘I met you earlier,’ I say,
offering her a piece.
Nell’s face is stony.
‘You’re new to town.’
It’s not a question.
She takes the gum from my hands,
pops a piece into her mouth and
puts the packet into her pocket.
‘Your dad at the farm for robbery? Drugs?’
‘My brother. His name’s Ed. I’m Joe.’
She holds up a copy of Die Hard.
‘Bruce Willis used to be so hot.’
She prods his picture on the box,
tilts her head to one side.
‘But he’s not hot now?’ I ask.
‘He might be.
I haven’t seen him since the restraining order.’